Paul Kahnert freelance journalist, unionist and anti-right to work activist
Photo credit: Paul Kahnert
Today, I’m excited to be speaking with Paul Kahnert who worked at Toronto Hydro for 33 years. While there, Paul got quite the education on politics and working-class rights eventually becoming a steward for grievances and arbitration.
Paul was also involved in negotiating committees and helped lead four successful strikes as well as leading the province-wide campaign and court case that successfully stopped Mike Harris’ government from selling Hydro One.
Paul is currently a freelance writer who has had his work published regularly on rabble.ca, Socialist Project, The Hamilton Spectator, Toronto Star and many, many local papers like Welland Tribune and St. Catharines Standard.
You can see his extensive writings here.
Paul and I discuss an issue that needs significantly more attention from both mainstream media and Canadian voters and that’s Right to Work Legislation.
Right to work laws sound harmless enough, because everyone should have the right to work.
However, right to work legislation undermines workers rights and their ability to organize in order to improve working conditions and ensure livable wages and a decent standard of living for every Canadian.
To understand what Right to Work really means we just have to look to the 26 US states like Florida, Georgia and Arkansas and the territory of Guam to see that Right to Work legislation is wrong for workers.
In his 2019 video, Why the Right to Work is Wrong, Robert Reich explained, the average worker in states with Right to Work laws makes 12% less annually than workers in states without Right to Work laws.
People in Right to Work states are less likely to have health insurance and to pay more out of pocket for health insurance.
Right to Work states have higher poverty; infant mortality; less investment in education; and higher work-place fatalities.
The goal of Right to Work legislation is to destroy unions by taking away the right to collect union dues from every unionized worker thereby undermining the bargaining power of unions.
Yet, we know from the 1946 Rand arbitration decision that ended the 1945 Ford Strike in Windsor, Ontario, that all workers in a workplace benefit from the improved working conditions and pay that union representatives negotiate. Therefore, Justice Rand declared all union members must pay union dues and those dues must be collected by the employer.
There’s been talk that the Rand formula is not in the best interest of workers, but that’s just capitalist gaslighting.
Another truth is, Right to Work states attract businesses that are only interested in paying lower wages; they don’t do research and development; they don’t add value; and they don’t invest in their workers.
Perhaps worst of all, these companies pack up and leave as soon as they find a cheaper source of labour or locations where workers rights aren’t protected or where environmental laws are lax.
In 2014 the Broadbent Institute released an amazing 4-minute video called Wealth Inequality in Canada that lays bare the truths about the gap between wealthy, middle class and poor Canadians. It shows without a doubt that Canada does in fact have a massive wealth inequality problem.
In 2014, the average, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) made 206 times the pay of an average worker.
In 2021, CEOs annual income skyrocketed to 243 times what the average worker makes.
In January 2023, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) released the report, The Breakfast of Champions, which stated that the average CEO made $14.3 million dollars annually in 2021 real dollars.
Meanwhile, Stats Canada reported the average worker earned $58,800 a year. Canada has literally one of the worst income gaps of any advanced country.
Circling back to Right to Work legislation, mainstream media has failed to pursue the fact that in 2012, Poilievre launched a campaign to bring US-style Right to Work laws to Canada.
Also, both Ford and Poilievre have been wooing trade unionists while actively working behind closed doors to bust unions.
In Scandinavian countries, like Finland, between 80 to 90 per cent of workers are unionized or covered by a collective agreement which means over 94% of Finnish workers earn close to the average middle class income wage.
Compare that to Canada where only 31% of workers are unionized and a mere 23 per cent of workers earn close to the average middle-class wage.
Kahnert tells Small Change listeners why the 1 per cent and Conservatives, like Poilievre, are trying to convince workers that unions just take their money – money they could be spending on their families – and that the Rand formula violates their human rights.
“If the union was eliminated at your workplace, the boss could fire anyone, anytime they wanted to for any reason. There would be no protection from racist bully employers and you would have no right of appeal through a union arbitration process. Very scary indeed,” Kahnert shared with Small Change.
He went on to say, “How long would it be before the employer imposed every single concession they have ever sought at the bargaining table — how low would they go?”
After hearing Kahnert, every sane Canadian will see that Right to Work legislation is just Wrong!
Thanks to everyone who read today’s article and listened to my podcast. With your continued support, a little Nicoll can make a lot of change.
Music: Real Estate by UNIVERSFIELD is licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License. freemusicarchive.org.
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Why Poilievre's promised right to work legislation is wrong!